


The Thing About Family

by Embli



Category: DCU
Genre: AU, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, Janet Drake-centric, M/M, POV Janet Drake, Tiny Tim might be trained to kill but he’s still a batman fanboy, Unconventional Families, and adopt my kid and grow a new one in the basment, hi you just killed my husband so marry me instead, kind of dark but in a fluffy way, that's normal right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28049859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embli/pseuds/Embli
Summary: Janet Drake and Talia al Ghul are probably an unlikely pair. But they make it work and raise two incredibly dangerous sons (one of which is vat-grown in the basement). Tim still decides to stalk Batman and Robin instead of focusing on things more aligned with family interests, such as busiess or murder. He’s a bit strange, that way. But then again, the entire family is anything but normal.
Relationships: Janet Drake/Talia al Ghul, Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Comments: 22
Kudos: 183





	The Thing About Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is (obviously) an AU. As such I cheerfully ignore certain things in cannon and/or pick things that suit me. Big things - but also tiny details like exactly how old Dick (who’s not really in the story anyway) was when he started out as Robin. But I find that tiny details often stick out more than massive changes, so heads up I guess. 
> 
> It verges on not!fic sometimes, but I really wanted to explore this idea without sitting down to write an epic. 
> 
> Also, I do not own the DCU and make no money off this, etc etc.

The year is 1991 and Janet Drake is considering the pros and cons of hiring someone to murder her husband versus doing it herself. It’s interesting, then, when an unknown woman sweeps in and decapitates Jack in the sitting room one evening before Janet has come to a decision. A few splattered blood drops land on Janet's cheek and pristine eggshell-white dress. The woman turns towards Janet, likely planning to take her head off as well. A normal person would probably scream, or run, or beg for mercy. Or possibly just freeze up on chock. Janet Drake has never been normal. She looks between the woman’s face and the blood-soaked sword and _smiles._

“A bit more dramatic than what I had planned for him,” she says. “But certainly effective. And while the only things I know about swordsmanship comes from private school fencing classes I think I can recognize good form when I see it.”

The woman blinks. She doesn’t lower her sword, but she also doesn’t make any move to come closer.

“I’m very good,” she says.

“Yes, dear, I can see that. Now, are you set on killing me right away or can we have discussion over tea first?”

“Why, Drake? So you can poison me?”

Janet tuts. “Poison the only interesting person I have met in months, if not longer? Hardly. And something tells me you’re immune to anything I might have at hand anyway.” 

That makes the woman smile, just a little. She sheds her sword.

“You’re… more interesting than I expected as well.”

They have tea. The woman doesn't introduce herself, so Janet keeps calling her ‘darling’ and ‘my dear’. After an hour or so the baby wakes up screaming upstairs. Janet makes a face.

“Jack fired the babysitter yesterday without getting a new one first,” she complains. Then she tilts her head, considering. “Say, was Timothy included in whatever deal that brought you here?” 

The assassin shakes her head. When she doesn’t say anything else Janet sighs and goes up to the baby. The assassin follows her. It’s a strange feeling to have her would-be killer walk behind her, almost electric, but by now Janet is fairly sure she’s not actually about to be slaughtered anymore. And if she’s wrong, well - it’s not like Janet could do much to stop it, even if she didn’t turn her back to the woman. 

Janet feeds Timothy and changes him and tries to rock him back to sleep. She’s never been particularly good with babies. The woman watches closely the entire time. When Timothy starts screaming again she steps forward.

“Let me,” she says. She sounds like she knows what she’s doing. And what the hell, if Timothy wasn’t in the contract… Janet passes over the baby. She watches the assassin hold Timothy close in still bloody hands, listens to her sing him a lullaby in… Arabic maybe? It’s not one of the languages Janet knows, or even knows well enough to recognize. Timothy, the little traitor, stops wailing and falls asleep almost immediately. Janet holds back the impulse to ask the woman to become the new babysitter. Whoever she is, she clearly already has a job. Still, there’s something… sweet on the assassin's face when she puts Timothy back in the cot. Someone’s got a soft spot for babies, apparently.

“I should go,” the woman says, sounding reluctant. And Janet makes a decision. Even she will admit it’s a weird decision, and one she can never quite explain why she made, but she never regrets it.

“No,” she says, with all the authority of someone born rich and used to getting their way. “You should stay. You should be my dear friend who supports me after the tragic death of my husband. And once an appropriate time has passed we should get married instead. I have already had one boring spouse. I want to know what it’s like to have an interesting one.”

The woman stares at her for a few seconds. Then she laughs. Low but joyful.

“You know,” she says. “That sounds like fun. I’m Talia.”

She is, in fact, Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. Not that Janet knew enough to make that connection then. And it’s not the name they put down on Talia’s official papers. There she’s Antonia Spada, and later Antonia Drake. Janet calls her ‘darling’ and ‘dear’ and ‘my lovely wife’ in public, and Talia when they’re alone. Talia doesn’t have a reason not to use Janet’s name, but tends to call her ‘beloved’ regardless of where they are.

It’s good. They’re good. It’s hardly a normal relationship, but neither of them are normal people. Talia dotes on Timothy - Janet is convinced he was at least half the reason why she stayed - and when the topic of a second child comes up Janet says “so long as I don’t have to be pregnant.” It turns out that neither of them has to. Talia mixes some of their DNA and grows a baby in a tank-like device in the basement. Janet still doesn’t like babies overly much, but she finds the science experiment endlessly fascinating. Talia names the boy Damian Jackson Drake.

“Jackson?” Janet asks, eyebrow raised.

“After the man who brought us together.”

“Ah. So Tim, then.”

“It will be good for them to get used to sharing, even if it is just a middle name.” 

Janet knows that sharing wasn’t really a sibling value that Talia grew up with, and she herself was an only child, but that sounds pretty fair. They agreed when Damian was still just a clump of cells in a test tube that it was better for their heirs to work together and protect each other from outside threats than to be in competition.

They will probably have separate paths laid out in front of them anyway. Tim is the oldest, and thus more likely to take over the company one day. And Damian - who is three years younger and, on paper, adopted - might be underestimated and overlooked, which is ideal if he wants to slip in and out of the public eye in Talia’s footsteps. And if Tim wants to do her kind of work for a few years before dedicating himself to business, that’s fine too. Janet intends to helm the company for at least another thirty years.

Tim’s actual dreams turn out to be… different, as he grows up. 

Oh, he’s promising at first. Does brilliantly at society parties even when he’s very young. (Unlike Damian, who has a bit of a temper and whom they often leave at home with the excuse that he has an early bedtime.) But then their neighbor Bruce Wayne decided to put on a bat costume to fight crime. And it shouldn’t be a problem - neither Talia nor Janet tend to do any of their law-breaking on their home turf - but Tim’s develops some sort of fanboy obsession with ‘Batman’ and his kid sidekick.

It’s not that Tim doesn’t know the truth about his family, because he does. And he’s not asking to put on a costume and go beat up muggers and petty-thieves. But he keeps sneaking out to take photos of the stupid so called heroes. And Talia taught him how to sneak, so he’s very good at it.

“We’ll have to re-double his combat training,” Talia says. Janet just nods, even if she finds the practicalities of that hard to believe. When Talia is home - as opposed to out on a job - she spends hours upon hours teaching Tim and Damian to be as lethal as possible. They’re not exactly training to be assassins, at least not yet, but they all know they have enemies. Talia’s father in particular. He hasn’t been a problem yet, and apparently tends to forget about his children for long stretches of time, but he’s still designated Enemy Number One for all the trouble he could cause if he so chose. 

And another few years later the increasingly annoying Batman draws Ra’s attention to Gotham. The first attack on Talia and the boys comes shortly afterwards.

“I am going to kill him,” Talia decides. She is speaking slowly and deliberately, but there’s a cold rage behind her eyes that hasn’t stopped burning since the first attack. Their little family has been on the run for weeks by that point and yet the league keeps finding them. “I am going to hack him up into tiny pieces and burn them and spread the ashes all over the world so no-one can bring him back.”

“I’m coming too!” Damian insists. He’s only eight, and has never killed anyone, but remains convinced that he is a lot more capable than he actually is. Tim, at eleven, just looks back and forth between his mothers. 

“ _I_ am coming with you,” Janet says. Talia’s eyes snap to her. While Janet usually doesn’t come on Talia’s jobs, she has done so in the past. And this is her family. Her sons. Talia isn’t the only one who wants to protect them.

“Someone has to stay with the boys.”

“We don’t need a babysitter!” Damian looks incredibly offended. But Tim lays a hand on his shoulder and says, in the same tone Janet used when she told Talia to stay and become her wife:

“You should leave us with Batman.”

Everyone goes quiet and stares at him. He smiles, sharp.

“We know who he and the Robins are,” Tim goes on. “We can blackmail him into protecting us. And while we’re there, I can get a closer look on the new Robin.”

Janet closes her eyes and mentally counts to ten. The new Robin is the street brat Jason Todd, whom Batman had only just started taking out on patrol when the Drakes had to flee town. But fanboy goals aside, it isn’t necessarily a bad plan. It will make Batman aware of their less than legal activities, which could be a problem, but much less of one than Ra’s is. Batman doesn’t even kill people. If he somehow manages to put Talia in Arkham Janet will just break her out. They’ve had multiple contingency plans for that over the years. 

Tim gets his way. Damian is furious. Mostly because he didn’t get to come on the hunt for his grandfather, but partly because Tim _did_ get what _he_ wanted. The plans to minimize sibling rivalry usually work, but minimize doesn’t mean eliminate and the boys can be incredibly competitive and stubborn when it suits them. 

Batman is clearly very unhappy as well, but they manage to work out a temporary deal. It’s at least half Tim in full-charm mode who does it. Just the thought makes Janet smile. She would have said it was the same charm he used to lure in Talia, but he was only a few weeks old then and mostly a screaming sack of potatoes. Tim has grown up brilliantly, and will become more brilliant still, but at that age he was just like any other baby. But knowing Talia, any baby would do. She truly does have a soft spot for them. 

Janet did see the way Tim looked at Jason Todd before they left, tough. That’s slightly worrying. She honestly can’t tell if it’s hero worship or a crush. And if it’s the latter - well, their family is incredibly protective of the few people they love. And possessive. Hopefully the age difference will keep anything for actually happening. Jason is thirteen, an eleven-year-old should be a baby in his eyes no matter how unusual said eleven-year-old is. 

She’s relieved when they actually do manage to permanently kill Ra’s. Batman tries to arrest them for it, but they kidnap their own children back and leave Gotham to let him cool off. Tim is disappointed to go and won’t stop talking about Jason. Janet is pretty sure it is a crush at that point, but Jason had clearly failed to even notice so she won’t have to try to get in the way. 

The peace with Batman once they do return to town is… well, it’s more of a frosty stalemate than an actual peace. Janet doesn’t mind. She’d be willing to start a new life somewhere else if she had to, but it’s good to settle back in and take control of the company - which had fallen into chaos in her absence - and she can be just as stubborn as her children. Gotham is her home. She will happily go on trips, but Batman doesn’t have the right to chase her away.

A few years later she’s in her home office and frowning at some papers when Tim knocks on the door and enters. He’s pale and his eyes are worryingly wet. She could count on one hand the times she’s seen him cry once he was out of toddlerhood. 

“We need to go to Ethiopia,” he says.

Oh. Janet slumps in relief. This is about Batman and Robin, not her own family. But it wouldn’t be. If something had happened to Damian or Talia, he would be angry, not close to tears. 

“Why?” she asks.

He squares his shoulders. 

“To steal Jason Todd’s body and take it to a Lazarus pit.”

Oh. 

Janet does some quick mental calculations. There’s usually a time limit on how long you can wait to dump a body in the pit and still expect a full resurrection. Sometimes there are other circumstances, she knows, but this is Talia’s area of expertise. And Talia is on an undercover job too far away. Even Janet and Tim might not manage it, with all the travel time. 

“Alright,” she says, because Tim is clearly going to try whether she agrees or not. “Grab Damian and I will call the airport.”

They don’t own a jet like Wayne does, but Janet knows how to pull strings. They have to be fast. Get to Ethiopia before Wayne can put the body on a plane back and make the whole chase a lot more ridiculous. If they can catch him it will be a lot closer to the nearest pit and they should be able to make it in time, if Jason Todd has only just died. Janet isn’t entirely sure on how they will steal him, much less how they will get past league security - the league of assassins sadly didn’t collapse after Ra’s death and they aren’t the biggest fans of the Drakes - but there are some contingency plans she could adapt on the fly. She sends a message to her wife as well. Talia might not be able to get to Ethiopia in time, but maybe if she goes directly to the pit and meets them there… And maybe… 

Less than twenty-four hours later the body of a teenage vigilante is lowered into the poison green waters. It takes a while for anything to happen, then Jason Todd comes back up, gasping. Janet looks from him to Talia - who’s smiles a little but is stiff and clearly expecting the pit rage to set in - to Damian who has a broken arm and a black eye but is staying perfectly quiet and still - to Tim who looks ready to vibrate himself out of his skin. Tim, covered in blood and smiling wide and thirteen years old.

“You are safe,” Talia says. “Nothing will hurt you here.” She helps him out of the pit and keeps herself between Jason and her family. When he doesn’t attack or say anything she starts to sing, voice low and calm. It’s the same lullaby she sang to Tim that first day. By now Janet knows it’s about a tired sailor who has survived a terrible storm but is now back on land, safe and able to rest. About the sailor’s mother welcoming him home and baking him sweet bread and singing the same songs to him as when he was a boy. In a way, the lullaby fits better here than it did for baby Tim. Janet has a strange feeling that this might have been the way Talia learned the song - that someone sang it to her, when she was coming out of the pit. She knows this isn’t always how people are treated, that many are thrown directly from the pit into a fight to encourage the blood-lust. 

“Jason,” Tim whispers. Jason’s eyes snap to him and Janet has to force herself not to step between them. There’s recognition in Jason’s eyes. He still doesn’t say anything. His shoulders start to shake. Tim takes a step forward. Damian makes a small noise of protest but nobody moves. Talia keeps singing. Over and over, taking it from the top every time she gets to the last line. 

“Jason,” Tim repeats, a bit louder. “It’s okay. We’ll protect you, and get you home to Bruce. It’s all going to be fine.” 

Jason flinches a little at Bruce’s name, which is interesting. But he straightens up. Takes a tiny step in Tim’s direction, then another. Talia slowly moves out of the way, still singing. Janet remembers handing the baby over to a stranger covered in blood, an assassin who she didn’t have any reason to trust. She wasn’t afraid then. Not worried about her own life and certainly not about Tim’s.

She’s worried now. Still not for herself, but for Tim. For Damian. For Talia, who would throw herself in front of Jason the moment he snapped. 

But Jason doesn’t snap.

“Hey, Timbo,” he says. His voice is hoarse and cracks a bit. “Are you a hallucination?”

“No,” Tim promises, and his voice cracks a little too. Janet can’t see his face from her position, but she would bet a lot of money that his eyes have gone tear-blank again. “I’m here, Jay. And so are you. You’re really here, and alive, and everything will be okay.”

Talia finishes the song for the last time. She takes her eyes off Jason to look around the room, then quickly back to him.

“We should go,” she says, clearly trying to sound calm but with some urgency creeping into her voice. Janet herself suddenly remembers the back-up that at least one of the ninjas managed to call for before they killed him on their way in. 

“Yes,” Janet agrees. “We really should.” 

She almost has a heart attack when Tim steps forward and takes Jason’s hand, but somehow no-one tries to kill anyone else and they all manage to get out before any more league members can descend upon them. 

Batman finds them instead, just after they get out. He freezes when he sees Jason. The two of them are staring at each other and it would be really touching, but Janet has rarely had patience for the feelings of people outside her little family and she is still concerned about the league.

“Excellent,” she says, taking charge. “I assume you have a plane or something similar nearby. You can be our get-away driver.” 

He turns to her.

“If you did anything to him…”

“What we _did_ ,” she says, coldly. “Was to give you your son back. And one of _my_ sons got a broken arm for the trouble, so I would really like to go somewhere with medical attention and no assassins. Present company excluded, of course.” She adds that last part just to infuriate him, but really, she doesn’t think anyone could blame her. Bruce Wayne and any alter ego he has should be eternally grateful, not accuse them of being anything less than perfect saviors. 

He does bring them all to a plane, at least. And pushes a med kit into her hands. Jason still hasn’t attacked anyone. He also hasn’t let go of Tim’s hand, but Janet decides that the still unacceptable age difference between fifteen and thirteen is a problem for another day.

Janet Drake is the wife of an assassin, and sometimes an assassin herself when it suits her, and she has two sons who have been trained in all manner of dangerous skills since toddlerhood. She has gotten quite good at field medicine over the years. She splints Damian’s arm, gets him an ice pack for the eye and some stitches for small wounds she hadn’t even known he had until now. Talia sits beside her and patches up Tim. She works slower than Janet does, because Jason is watching closely and fast movements around his new teddy bear probably isn’t a good idea. At least most of the blood on Tim isn’t his. 

They go back to Gotham. Jason is fully healed physically, but mentally is another story. He does get pit rage, but Talia says it’s surprisingly mild for a first timer. The trauma of his murder seems to be a bigger problem. 

Talia sticks around Wayne Manor the first week to keep an eye on the pit rage. Tim only sleeps over the first night but keeps visiting every day and doesn’t seem inclined to stop. Damian, at least, stays away. He seems almost jealous at the lack of attention, which amuses Janet. She takes him out to Bat Burgers for some disgusting fast food to cheer him up. They don’t actually eat at the restaurant - if it can be called that - but have their meal to go and eat it in one of Gotham’s nicer parks. 

“You did good back there,” she says. “On the mission.” It’s a bit weird to speak of a mission rather than a job. A bit superhero-like terminology, to her mind. But it was a lot more superhero-like than any of them has gotten before, even Tim with his fanboying. Of course, a superhero wouldn’t have killed everyone who stood in their way. And they probably would not have brought children along. Batman does, of course, but not one as young as Damian. Even Greyson had been older when he started out, if only by a bit. 

If Damian or Tim had been raised by the league like Talia was, they would have killed people long before now. She always wanted them to wait until they were a bit older. Not because of the killing itself, but because of the danger presented by real enemies. 

It’s only now it occurs to Janet that while she’s never been traumatized by murdering people, she’s strange. Until now she had just assumed that Damian and Tim were like her. Of course they would be, they were her and Talia’s children. And they had all their training, even if it hadn’t been taken into practice before. She looks at Damian, who’s finishing up his milkshake. He doesn’t look traumatized. She tries to find the words to ask him about it, but nothing seems right. He would probably take it as an insult. An accusation of weakness. 

Janet’s a bad parent, she realizes. It’s a strange thought to have. Oh, she thought it all the time when Tim was a baby. With Damian too, but less - she had Talia then. But Talia is probably also a bad mother. Janet wrinkles her nose. That thought is even stranger. Talia is a lot of things, but she loves her children more than anything. Janet thinks back to that day in Tim’s nursery again. On that day Tim lost a father he would never remember, and his mother handed him over to a known killer covered in blood. And that killer became his mother too, before she even put him down. A better mother than Janet was. Talia sang him to sleep. She loved him. And it’s not that Janet doesn’t love Tim or Damian. She does. Now. She didn’t when they were babies. When they were just… small and helpless and kind of ugly. When they screamed all the time, always demanding attention. When she couldn’t understand them.

She watches Damian, who will be ten years old next week, somehow manage to get milkshake on his nose. He tries to lick it away with his tongue, then straightens up and takes a napkin to wipe it off with an air of great dignity. She wonders if she understands him any better now than when he came out of the tank. If she will ever really understand any of her children. 

Tim steps in as Robin while Jason is recovering. Janet somehow agreed to this. She isn’t quite sure how. It probably had something to do with the fact that she has never been able to stop Tim from sneaking out and doing what he wants.

“You were supposed to be a businessman,” she complains. “Or an assassin. Not a vigilante.” 

“I’ll still be a businessman,” he answers. “When I’m older.” She notices he doesn’t say anything about assassinations. He did kill people when they were breaking their way into the league base to borrow their pit. Not a lot of people, he was the one who carried Jason’s body, but the ones he did kill were handled efficiently and bloodily. He has never seemed to regret it, but it’s hard to be sure. He idolizes vigilantes famous for their no-killing rule. Is one of those vigilantes, now. But he grew up with Janet and Talia. With his training. 

Jason gets better and back in the game. Janet isn’t surprised when that doesn’t mean Tim steps back. For a while she thinks one of them will pick a new name, like Greyson had. And sometimes one of them will try out a new alias and costume, as if they’re throwing ideas out and seeing what sticks. But a lot of the time they are both Robin. On alternating nights so they can keep up with sleep and school, or on the same ones so they can confuse the Gotham criminals. Rumors start to fly that Robin is a teleporter or able to be in two places at once. The fact that Jason is almost a head taller than Tim and that their fighting styles are slightly different - slightly, Tim is copying Jason and they’re both copying Greyson - doesn’t seem to get noticed. 

Damian sulks. He doesn’t want to be a hero, but is very annoyed at the decision that he is too young to take any assassination jobs. At least it’s harder for him to sneak out and try to do it anyway. Not only would he have to get a mark beforehand rather than stumble upon one, he couldn’t do it in Gotham. The Drakes have never taken a job in their home town, even before Batman got on the scene. 

Tim and Jason start dating in the end, but by that time they’re both legal and Janet has to admit the age difference between nineteen and twenty one isn’t as bad as it could have been. And it _is_ pretty cute when Tim calls Jason ‘beloved’ in just the same tone Talia has used for Janet almost as long as Tim’s been alive. 

It’s good, she figures. But she does make a point of giving Tim a new sword for his birthday and telling the story of how she and Talia met. Jason, who is attending the birthday dinner and clearly hasn’t heard the story before, looks a bit stunned at first but more amused than put off. And, well. He spends his nights beating people up and running across rooftops in a cape. Maybe he isn’t quite normal, either. She would have to try much harder to scare him away. And by now, she doesn’t think she wants to.


End file.
